Apple has just announced it’s best quarter EVER, but the stock is taking a pounding on Wall Street.

Apple announced earnings for the first fiscal quarter of 2013: $54.5 billion and a net profit of $13.1 billion. But the stock is down more than 4% in after-hours trading because Wall Street is worried that Apple’s phenomenal growth is slowing. Don’t you love how a record-breaking quarter is still considered an “ouch?”

Apple was expected to report decent numbers despite the public’s perception that Apple’s streak of runaway sales of iPhones and iPads is plateauing. AAPL has been falling due to a number of factors, including analysts’ low predictions for the next March 2013 quarter. Apple is printing money, but not fast enough for Wall Street.

$54.5 billion in revenue is a new company record. The next best quarter was set in Q1 2012 with $46.33 billion. So Apple beat its own holiday sales from last year with about 17.6% year-on-year growth.

22.9 million iPads — A 111% unit increase over the year-ago quarter. iPad sales more than doubled this last quarter. You can thank the iPad mini. 22.9 million iPads is a big jump from 15.4 million sold this time last year.

47.8 million iPhones — iPhone sales were up from 37 million this time last year. That’s good, but watchers were expecting more than a 10-million-unit bump.

4.1 million Macs — Mac sales were down 1 million units from this time last year. iPod sales were also down a few million units (12.7 million, compared to 15.4 million last year).

Apple today announced financial results for its 13-week fiscal 2013 first quarter ended December 29, 2012. The Company posted record quarterly revenue of $54.5 billion and record quarterly net profit of $13.1 billion, or $13.81 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $46.3 billion and net profit of $13.1 billion, or $13.87 per diluted share, in the 14-week year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 38.6 percent compared to 44.7 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 61 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Average weekly revenue was $4.2 billion in the quarter compared to $3.3 billion in the year-ago quarter.

The Company sold a record 47.8 million iPhones in the quarter, compared to 37 million in the year-ago quarter. Apple also sold a record 22.9 million iPads during the quarter, compared to 15.4 million in the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 4.1 million Macs, compared to 5.2 million in the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 12.7 million iPods in the quarter, compared to 15.4 million in the year-ago quarter.

Apple’s Board of Directors has declared a cash dividend of $2.65 per share of the Company’s common stock. The dividend is payable on February 14, 2013, to shareholders of record as of the close of business on February 11, 2013.

“We’re thrilled with record revenue of over $54 billion and sales of over 75 million iOS devices in a single quarter,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We’re very confident in our product pipeline as we continue to focus on innovation and making the best products in the world.”

“We’re pleased to have generated over $23 billion in cash flow from operations during the quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “We established new all-time quarterly records for iPhone and iPad sales, significantly broadened our ecosystem, and generated Apple’s highest quarterly revenue ever.”

Apple is providing the following guidance for its fiscal 2013 second quarter:

Deals of the Day

Stop pay dividents and go private…wall street not doing apple any justice…They sit and wait each year for another “WoW product” and stifle the company, iTV this iTV that…why we dont hear anyone cry for a Google Nexus TV, Microsoft xBox TV and Amazon Kindle TV….guess only apple can innovate and advance technology.

lwdesign1

Let’s call it for what it is, intentional stock manipulation. Stocks are valued by the buying public’s confidence. All it takes to bring down a stock’s price is to reduce that confidence with a misleading or outright false article based on speculation or actual criminal intent. Then when the price falls, investors in the know can snap up the stock at a reduced price. Later it is announced that “surprise” there was no situation at all (our sources misinformed us) and the company is doing just fine, and the stock goes up due to positive earnings and stellar sales, and the promise of new innovations on the horizon.

lwdesign1

Regarding innovation: Why is it that all smartphones look essentially like the iPhone, all slim “ultrabooks” look like the MacBook Air, all tablets look like the iPad, and all high-end laptops look very similar to the MacBook Pro? Anyone who still insists that Apple isn’t the industry leader in innovation is just being obtuse or purposely unobservant. Apple creates all the big ideas, then others come along and take those ideas and make incremental changes to them–and call that innovation. The world and millions of other electronics companies are waiting for Apple to shock, amaze and disrupt the world again with some new gadget or rethinking of an old gadget–all so they can capitalize on Apple’s ideas. The criticisms about Apple not being “innovative” anymore is really just a statement of “why haven’t you brought out something new we can steal and copy from?”. It’s a sad state that Apple led the computer revolution with the Apple II (copied by the IBM PC Jr and countless others) and continues to lead in phones, music players, tablets… and the list goes on. Some day it would be wonderful to see some other company come out with completely new, groundbreaking products.